Beginning their career in 1991 with an eponymous debut LP, Cypress Hill achieved the rare feat of making West Coast hip hop that sounded nothing like what the music world would traditionally associate with LA. No thumping 808s, no whiny synths, and not a George Clinton sample in sight. Instead they came from the boom-bap school of hip hop and made a record that was, in equal measure, loud, fun and really quite menacing. Ice-T described their style as sounding like "crazy Mexi

Imagine, if you will, that you have a soul. A tangible soul that you can actually touch, full of tenderness and joy and sweet delicious sorrow...all of 'the feels' as the kids today say. Now imagine having that soul pulled out of your body and inviting a gang of football hooligans to stamp on it for 41 minutes and 34 seconds. That is the experience of listening to Mount Eerie's 'A Crow Looked At Me'.  There have been several albums made about death, particularly around the m

Prior to the release of this album, art-rock whizz kids Everything Everything had certainly shown some promise on the indie scene but threatened to fall into the mire of decent-but-never-great bands that were, for a while, the order of the day.  Their first effort 'Man Alive' was a band finding it's feet. Their next release, 'Arc' showed a giant step forward in terms of songwriting ability and spawned classic weirdo anthems like 'Kemosabe' and 'Cough Cough'. Then came the mo

This year the shock news broke that Michael Eugene Archer, better known as D'Angelo, passed away at the tender age of 51 years old. As such, the world has lost one of the most brilliant artists of our time and one who left a trail of incredible music in his wake. So it is only appropriate that we pay homage by reviewing one of the greatest albums of the past 25 years, certainly the greatest soul album by some distance, the year 2000-released, meandering masterpiece that is 'V

By now, the Wu Tang Clan has become a global brand, their 'W' symbol recognised almost the entire world over. This is inexplicable for many reasons. For starters, their music is about as hardcore as hip hop gets. Take 'Protect Ya Neck' for example. Nine MCs (yes, NINE) rap over what sounds like a home-made cassette and there is not a chorus in sight. However, the song is a stone cold classic that still slaps as hard today as it did when released and somehow became a crossover

Sam Fender, also known as the Geordie Springsteen, has been blazing a trail since his 2019 debut 'Hypersonic Missiles'. Despite looks that could land him on Love Island, Fender is a unique beast. His music is what should be a very unfashionable brand of whole-hearted Americana, but instead of talking about the lost wheat fields of Kansas, the subject matter very much focuses on working class life in the UK, particularly his own upbringing living largely below the poverty line

Obviously, in this day and age, the subject of Sean "Puffy" Combs, aka Puff Daddy, aka Diddy, is a touchy one. At the time of this writing, he is sitting in county jail awaiting trial on a variety of charges, including assault and sex trafficking (among other things). As a human being, he has always been suspect. Even way back when the east coast / west coast beef was destroying hip hop, famously taking the lives of 2pac and Puffy's best-selling artist The Notorious BIG, if y